AG Mazuz asks Supreme Court to overrule religious s. court

JPost:

Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz has called on the High Court of Justice to accept a petition by a Danish-born convert to Judaism demanding that it overrule rabbinical court decisions nullifying the conversions, including hers, made by special courts headed by Rabbi Haim Druckman.

The call to cancel the conversions was made by Dayan (religious court judge) Avraham Attia, a member of the Ashdod District Rabbinical Court, and in a ruling by Dayan Avraham Sherman of the Supreme Rabbinical Court.

The petition against the cancellations was filed by the Danish-born woman whose Judaism was rejected by Attia 15 years after she converted, her three children and a long list of women's organizations, including the Center for Women's Justice.

In his response to the petition, which was filed on June 5, Mazuz argued that Attia's decision should have been rejected because of procedural flaws and therefore the Supreme Rabbinical Court should not have heard the appeal or ruled on the matter at all.

This would mean not only that the woman would still be considered a Jew, but that the ruling to nullify the Druckman conversion court decisions would also not have been made.

According to Mazuz, Attia did not give the woman a fair chance to defend herself against his ruling that her conversion was fraudulent because she had not observed halacha.

The case had begun innocently, when the convert and her husband filed for an uncontested divorce. All seemed to be going well during the hearing and Attia was preparing the terms of the divorce when he asked her whether she was observant. The woman replied she was not, not realizing that this could impact on the divorce application.

It did. Soon afterwards, Attia ruled the woman was not Jewish and that therefore the marriage was invalid from the start, and the couple did not need a divorce.

He also ruled that the woman and her children could not marry here for the time being.[...]